The Best Gifts for Travelers – Modern Gift Ideas for the Jet Setter

Holiday shopping for someone with a major case of wanderlust? You don’t have to travel far and wide to find the best holiday gift. We rounded up the very best in modern and functional travel gifts so you can treat the jet setter in your life to a first-class holiday. For more holiday gift ideas, check out our library of holiday gift guides thoughtfully curated by Design Milk editors!

EvaMini by LOMMER

EvaMini by LOMMER

We love the EvaMini for its compact size and simple, minimalist design. Small enough to carry in your hand, but roomy enough to store the classic P.W.K (phone, wallet, keys?), the Mini is made of a foam-like, “E.V.A.” material, that’s completely waterproof so your traveler can feel good knowing their must-haves are safe and dry, come rain or shine. It’s even available in a variety of colorways, though we love the classic minimalist edge of the Off Black (are you surprised?).

$65

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Carry-all Set by Junes

Carry-all Set by Junes

This set of reusable pouches by Junes has a use for every phase of travel: use them to organize clothing and toiletries before packing, use them in place of disposable shopping bags while at your destination, use the smallest pouch as a wristlet for quick errands, store worn clothes in them on the trek home, the possibilities are endless. They come in a range of beautiful colors, and the brand’s sustainable bio-knit material means you can wash and reuse them again and again and help save the planet from single-use plastic pollution!

$18

CATCH:2 Wireless Charger in Black by Courant

CATCH:2 Wireless Charger in Black by Courant

This wireless charger by Courant will have all your recipient’s devices charged up and ready for whatever adventures they have in store. It’s slim profile and wide leather charging pad will save space in your jet setter’s luggage and keep them from wrangling a tangled mess of charging cables. Expect many thanks for this!

$150

The Diplomat Black Tie Travel Case by Capsule

The Diplomat Black Tie Travel Case by Capsule

Because there are few things more stressful than airport security checkpoints, the traveler in your circle will love having all their important documents – ID, passport, vaccine cards, you name it – in one easy to maneuver location. The stylish black leather Diplomat Blacktie Travel Case by Capsule has a roomy interior for all these essentials and more, and a secure closure to ensure nothing gets lost along the way.

$110

zMask Face Mask by Zimarty

zMask Face Mask by Zimarty

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, face masks are a non-negotiable for safe travel – so you might as well have one you enjoy wearing. The zMask Face Mask by Zimarty does what you need face masks to do while looking incredibly cool in the process. The origami inspired design makes for a modern, architectural look, that also holds itself up around the mouth area, creating less friction between the mask and your recipient’s face (less friction = less maskne!).

$45 – 50

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City Backpack by mariamaleta

City Backpack by mariamaleta

Frequent travelers will know the importance of having a bag that can do it all – especially when you’re trying to save luggage space! The City Backpack by mariamaleta does exactly that. The neutral style and easy closure are as fashionable as they are functional. The reversible black and brown leather design, and convertible straps that can be worn over both shoulders (backpack style) or slung over one like a tote – making this a bag you can switch up whenever the mood or destination strikes.

$220

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Obsidian Black Bottle by LARQ

Obsidian Black Bottle by LARQ

Not to be confused with just any reusable water bottle, LARQ water bottles are the first ever self-cleaning bottles out there. They use a UV-C LED light to purify your water and bottle from 99.99% of contaminants – perfect for long haul hikes and camping enthusiasts. With one full charge, the purification system will do its thing for one whole month before needing to recharge so you can go the distance. We love the sleek look of the Obsidian Black colorway, but there’s bound to be a hue to suit your traveler.

$95

Haircare Minis by SEEN

Haircare Minis by SEEN

This travel set of dermatologist-designed hair minis use hair-loving and non-pore clogging ingredients that will keep your recipient’s hair (and skin!) in check while on the go. The set includes a gentle cleansing shampoo, nourishing conditioner and blow-out cream for an easy hair care routine from in-shower to styling. Plus, it’s on sale!

$29

Porter 15 oz Glass by W&P

Porter 15 oz Glass by W&P

Perfect for the eco-conscious traveler, the Porter Glass is a must for your travel bag so you can refill and reuse while on the move and curb single-use plastic waste. The durable glass and protective matte silicone cover mean you can feel good about bringing the cup with you wherever you go. Use it for cocktails, coffees, teas, you name it. It’s even available in a bunch of soft pastel colors!

$25

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Tuplus X2 22″ Aluminum Carry-on by Tuplus

Tuplus X2 22″ Aluminum Carry-on by Tuplus

If the traveler on your list has been extra nice this year, pay it forward with a piece of high-quality luggage that will last a lifetime. This Aluminum Carry-on by Tuplus is the ultimate luxury suitcase. It’s equipped with all the bells and whistles – an aircraft grade aluminum and magnesium alloy exterior, genius upright opening capability, lightweight and space saving hydraulic hinges, and smooth, quiet wheels. The impeccable design and functionality of this carry-on is 100% worth the investment.

$549

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>>> For more travel gifts, visit the Design Milk Shop here! <<<

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Meet Eone – The Modern Watch Brand Championing Inclusive Design

Not all timepieces are created equal. In fact, most failed to accommodate those who are visually impaired, and the alternatives that sprung up in their place – talking and delicate tactile watches – fell short on quality and design. That is until modern watch brand Eone came to be, anyway. When founder Hyungsoo Kim learned of the watch world’s inaccessibility through a friend who is blind, he set out to create an inclusively designed timepiece that serves everyone – and delivers on next-level design in the process. Kim’s thoughtful collaboration with designers and people with vision impairments led to the engineering of a watch unlike anything else out there – a modern and iconic timepiece designed to communicate time through touch rather than only sight. Newly added to the Design Milk Shop, there’s plenty to admire about this trailblazing watch brand, so let’s dive in.

Eone’s best-selling model, The Bradley, is named after veteran turned Paralympic athlete and gold-medalist Bradley Snyder – who became blind while defusing bombs in the line of duty.

The hero of the Eone catalog is the Bradley model. Named after veteran turned Paralympic athlete and gold-medalist Bradley Snyder – who became blind while defusing bombs in the line of duty – this line of watches champions the needs of the visually impaired and can be enjoyed by everyone, blind and sighted alike. The best-selling watch collection lets users feel the time thanks to their unique three-dimensional form. Raised lines in varied widths denote the hours and ticking watch hands are reimagined with an innovative magnetic ball bearing system that circles the watch face on a track for minutes and another for the hour. Pretty cool right?

Being able to tell the time in a way that’s accessible and convenient, while core to Eone’s ethos, isn’t enough – the brand wants blind and sighted users to experience ultra-modern design and have options to choose from. The Bradley comes in a variety of styles and finishes, all befit with architectural details and minimalist aesthetic that have become synonymous with Eone. Their newest model, The Switch even has a Kickstarter community rallying behind it and is slated to join the DM shop soon.

The Bradley Element

The Bradley Element

Tested by Tech Editor Gregory Han (find his full review here), the Bradley Element is unique from others on the Eone line up due to the architectural planes that lead up to the raised hour lines, creating alternating high and low impressions across the watch face. Made with a durable, scratch-resistant ceramic and PVD coated – the materials are carefully considered for texture and resilience. The Element’s matte black finish and black stainless steel mesh strap give the watch a sleek and modern edge that’s as stylish as it is functional.

$350

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The Bradley Apex

The Bradley Apex

Made for your everyday and any occasion, the Bradley Apex features the brand’s signature raised line notations, on a smooth black ceramic watch face. Italian leather straps give the piece a more casual look and feel and can even be swapped out for others in the brand’s collection for added versatility. The Apex even features a NATO strap, a call back to traditional military styling, that effortlessly loops around the watch to deliver a perfect fit.

$285

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The Slab Collection Is Minimal, Intentional Seating

A collaboration based on elevated aesthetics with everyday function has resulted in the Slab Collection of minimal seating. Furniture studio Union Wood Co and designer Alyssa Lewis of Studio Block have created three pieces – dining chair, counter stool, and bar stool – that intentionally reduce the details of a chair’s structure. These pieces are a true celebration of form and the natural beauty of wood.

The Slab Collection is the first collaboration between the two studios, who met while working closely together during the 2019 Interior Design Show Vancouver. It was an easy match thanks to their individual design approaches. Studio Block uses a minimalist’s eye to create serene living spaces: “I find there is a lot of visual noise that surrounds us every day, so I like to simplify things in my design work to quiet the world around us,” said Lewis. Union Wood Co crafts furniture that will stand the test of time in both design and construction.

Slab Dining Chair

The seating’s name comes from the raw material used to make each piece, hand-selected ash slabs. The hardwood is ideal for furniture for its durability, shock-resistence, and light weight. The Slab Collection allows you to choose from natural, whitewashed, or blackened finishes. Each piece is then coated with a matte commercial grade finish for a softened look that will last through a variety of living and working environments.

Slab Counter Stool

Slab Bar Stool

To learn more about the Slab Collection, visit unionwoodco.com.

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F5: Anda French Shares a Book That Inspires, a Provocative Artist + More

Anda French is cofounder of Boston-based architecture and design studio French 2D alongside her sister, Jenny French. The studio’s work on mixed-use projects combines ideas of collectivity with more radical organizations and typologies. The award-winning practice is deeply engaged with local issues of collectivity, housing, public space, history, and identity. They also focus on collaboration across multiple scales in environments for participatory events and dinners, urban-scale graphics, experimental facades, and buildings for collective living.

Anda and French 2D completed the first all compact housing unit building in Boston, and their work in collaborative and participant led design for Bay State Commons Cohousing won a 2020 Progressive Architecture Award from Architect Magazine. French 2D was named as a 2019 Architectural Record Design Vanguard, and the studio has been featured in numerous publications, including Domus, Metropolis, and The Architect’s Newspaper, and as Architect Magazine’s Next Progressives. Anda is currently a Visiting Faculty member at the Princeton University School of Architecture and is the 2022 President-Elect of the Boston Society of Architects/AIA.

Today Anda joins us for Friday Five!

Photo courtesy MoMA

1. Designing Motherhood

Designing Motherhood, by Michelle Millar Fisher and Amber Winick, was released in September from MIT Press. Their Instagram account showcases an incredible mix of work centered on human reproduction and design, and the politics and conversations that entails. I love that their work and advocacy speak so poignantly to pressing societal issues, while feeling personal as I go through my own journey, merging motherhood and design work.

Coffee Seeks Its Own Level by Allan Wexler \\\ Photo: Allan Wexler

2. Allan Wexler

The wonderful artist Allan Wexler always keeps us on our toes. Jenny and I are forever inspired by his provocative, and almost inevitable, take on defamiliarizing everyday objects, furniture, and spaces.

Cover art: Judith Leemann

3. Design Studio for Social Intervention / Ideas, Arrangements, Effects

Boston-based DS4Si released Ideas, Arrangements, Effects last year and generously held a reading group last Summer along with the University of Orange. This book was an incredible resource for getting my graduate and undergraduate students to help talk about the real dimensions of design work that addresses social justice in the built realm. The core premise is that “ideas are embedded in social arrangements, which in turn produce effects.” DS4Si explores this through accessible descriptions and incredible examples of their own work that help redefine our agency and impact in the material world.

Photo: Public Domain / Heinrich Böhler

4. Bodies and Textiles, Specifically Emilie Flöge’s Dresses

I keep returning to my own relationship to clothing and identity. Emilie Flöge’s work is an incredible example of the freeing of volumetric textiles that helps us rethink bodies in space. History paints her as Klimt’s muse, but a show a decade ago at the Leopold in Vienna proved through postcards and exchanges that Flöge was collaborator and confidant in the Secessionist movement. My own practice is drawn to historical and contemporary textile work that shifts and remolds gender and identity.

Snailor Moon & Snail Earnhardt Jr. 2021 by Haas Brothers

5. Siblings

Now, more than ever, I am so aware of how strange and lucky it is to run a practice with my sister. Sibling creative pairs are always fascinating to us – The Mulleavy Sisters, Haas Brothers, Leong Leong, Hariri and Hariri, the Bouroullec Brothers… We are proto-collectives: the place where we first learn to share and collaborate without judgement, but with the productive frictions that arise from knowing each other too well.

Work by Anda French + French 2D:

Kendall Garage and Dresses \ French 2D designed 26,000 sf of permanent graphic scrim to wrap the Kendall Square Garage in Cambridge, MA. The work wrestles with the relationship between seeing surface and volume, drawing and building. Jenny and Anda sewed dresses to stage the final photography. They acted as scale figures, pieces of the building broken free and traversing the site. \\\ Photo: John Horner Photography

Outlier Lofts \ Outlier Lofts is a three-unit residential building that conjures past lives as a new act of collective preservation and form-making. French 2D uses this playful technique as a radical way of thinking about alternative preservation in the otherwise strait-laced historic landscape of Boston. \\\ Photo: John Horner Photography

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A Jerusalem Historian Requests a Home Renovation Inspired by Her Work

In Ramat Gan, Israel, a family tasked Israeli interior designer Chen Shadmi to renovate their 1980s house into a modern tri-level home that’s inspired by the wife’s work as a historian specializing in Old Jerusalem. The family requested that the home celebrate Armenian art in Jerusalem, as well as integrate a more contemporary floor plan that was adaptable to different needs.

Shadmi and the family began the design process with a tour to Old Jerusalem to visit the wife’s favorite places and reacquaint themselves with materials that are customary in Eastern European homes. They asked Armean Darian, an Armenian ceramic artist based in Jerusalem, to hand-paint the illustrations on the tiles seen on the pillar on the ground floor and the stairs leading to the first floor.

The entrance floor has an open floor plan that includes the kitchen, dining area, and living room with a dedicated library. On the upper floor lives a family space, three children’s room, a laundry room, two baths, and a main bedrooms. The bottom floor includes two study rooms (one for each parent), and a secondary living room from which there is access to the lower garden.

Throughout the home, the walls are adorned with the client’s copies of manuscripts, murals, unique maps, and artwork.

Common to all the bathrooms is the dark chest of drawers and the application of colorful tiles

The upper garden is used for entertaining, equipped with an outdoor kitchen, dining area, and pampering seating under a pergola. In the lower garden, a cooking area with a pizza oven and meat smoker, a seating area, a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a kid’s wooden house and climbing wall provide ample opportunities to spend outside.

Photos by Shay Epstein.

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